It has been a long while since I wrote a post about anything on here, not for the lack of wanting to post anything, just haven’t had a good enough idea, or an event to share with you all. But a lot has been happening in my life despite that, especially with a certain hobby of mine, which you have been able to read about on my blog in the past as well, so that will be the main focus of this post. As the title of it already suggests, a wish that I’ve had for quite some time now, and something that made me take the path I’ve taken, has now finally come true, so let’s dive deeper into it below! 🙂
You could already have figured it out from some of my previous posts that I am talking about sim racing. And if you have read my posts regarding sim racing and building my gaming computer, you might know that one of my biggest wishes, or hopes I should say, was to take part in 24h of Le Mans in the virtual world. Now, I know I will probably never get to that super quick level to be among the people that race in the official Le Mans 24h Virtual, but the last few months have opened my eyes to a world I didn’t even know existed. I mean yes, I knew there were endurance races going on, but I was never getting near them. But I wouldn’t be myself if I haven’t had found a way to do just that!
Yes, I finally managed to take part in a 24h race! To be honest, it wasn’t around Le Mans, but rather at one of my best performing tracks in the virtual world, Spa Francorchamps. And that is where the title of this post comes from! But it was a 24 hour race nonetheless, so I was able to cross it off my wish list. Aaaand, Le Mans 24h is actually just around the corner now as well!
The race in question was iRacing’s special event, the 24h of Spa, as you can see above, that usually takes place just before the real world 24h race at that track. As I have mentioned a few rows higher already, Spa Francorchamps is a track I have had a lot of success during the course of my “sim racing career”, had a number of wins, a lot of top 10 finishes, so you could say that I know the track rather well. That is also why I didn’t need that much practice this time around, despite jumping in a car I haven’t driven that much before, but I got used to it as well. Although it did frustrate me during the race itself, but more on that later. 😀
As I have put together a proper sim racing/streaming set up for myself earlier this year (feel free to follow me on Twitch), of course I’ve been doing more of racing and streaming since then. Like I have said a few times, the initial plan for this year was to go to Silverstone to see a Formula 1 race in person at the track, but that didn’t happen. I backed out of the group, was able to get my money back, which I then invested into this new gear. I decided to get myself a Fanatec GT DD Pro wheel base, a Fanatec McLaren GT3 V2 wheel rim, a Playseat Trophy simrig to put it all on, another monitor to be able to follow the stream more closely and a streaming light. You can see all of it on the photo below.
With all this new gear, I was able to properly sit down and focus on racing, or streaming as well, when I was on. But the wish to do a 24h race was still in the air for me. But a few weeks ago, the opportunity presented itself and of course I jumped straight into it. From then and until the actual start of the race, a lot of things changed. To not go into a lot of details, but let’s just say the way it all turned out, I got a lot more race time, which was much better for the stream that I was doing.
I also have to say a few words about the team I was in for the race. I have done quite a bit of team events in the past as well, and always had so much fun! But, over a period of 24 and a bit hours, there’s a lot more happening between the teammates than during a 3 hour race for example. I have to say that during this race, I had the most fun out of all the team races I’ve done so far! The teammates were just great, I had an amazing time racing with them, and also the fact that we were doing so well in the actual race helped massively! I just want to thank them for the opportunity once again, and I hope we’ll be able to race together some time soon again.
Since I briefly touched the subject of the race itself, we qualified in 41st position, out of 48 entries in our split. I couldn’t have cared less about it, as I always just want to have fun racing, no matter what position I am in. Especially in a race as long as this was, where literally anything can happen – and spoiler alert – it did! 😀 We had an incredible start, gaining 11 positions within the first 2 laps, and we didn’t stop there! A few hours into the race, we managed to claw our way all the way up to 5th place! Unfortunately, a bit of technical issues, and a single incident we had over night pushed us back to 16th, which in hindsight was still an amazing result at the time. But we didn’t give up, fought our way back, and on the finishing line, after more than 24 hours of racing we finished in 11th position!
Like I also mentioned earlier, I was getting a bit frustrated with my own performance during the race. My fuel consumption was a bit higher than what my teammates were doing, so I had to really be careful with what I was doing in the car to keep us on our strategy. I completely changed my driving halfway into the race, but I was still losing quite a bit of time all the way around a lap. I just couldn’t be as quick as I could have been, but I did keep telling myself that staying on strategy was more important than outright pace that I was doing. Eventually, towards the end of the race, I was let loose, but at that time I was already pretty tired and unfortunately made a couple of mistakes, damaged the car and that was it. Decided to rather hand the car over to someone that I knew was going to bring it home in one piece instead of me crashing out with 2 hours to go.
The whole experience of this race was just amazing! My teammates, incredible, super fast, super easy to get along with, despite the fact we basically met each other not even a week before the race, the car, although a bit tricky to handle but we made it to the end of the race with it, and I have never been on stream as long as I have this time. I was tired afterwards, not going to lie, since I only got a couple of hours of sleep, but I was even expecting to be awake through the whole thing.
Now, my focus shifts towards another 24h race I have planned, the 24h of Le Mans! It is going to be another tricky race, especially in a car I haven’t really driven properly before, but there’s almost a month left for me to get up to speed with it and get used to it. I’m sure it’s not going to take me that long, but anyway, want to put in my best performance in the race!
Blogging with Jure 